As 2014 came to a close, Inconvenient History (www.inconvenienthistory.com) closed the door on its sixth year of activities. In our online journal, we published another 32 articles by some of the leading voices in historical revisionism in the world today. In addition, we printed hardcopy annual of our complete works from 2013. This volume is comprised over 500 pages of revisionist scholarship and continues to sell at a healthy rate through Amazon.com. In addition, another 20 articles were posted to the “Inconvenient History – Independent Revisionist Blog” (http://revblog.codoh.com/ ). Finally many hundreds of news posts were made to Twitter where @inconhistory has accumulated 483 followers. In a typical week our retweet reach can reach over 1,800 people.

Throughout 2014, pages of the Inconvenient History flagship journal were viewed 200,775 times by some 69,378 users. This represents a 15% increase over 2013. Our best day was 3 September when our pages were viewed some 8,542 times. While most of our readership is from the United States, 2014 saw a 105% increase in readership in the United Kingdom, an astounding 472% increase in Australia and a whopping increase of 722% in Canada.

For the technically inclined, most readers accessed us via Chrome, followed by Firefox and Safari, with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in a distant fourth. Access via mobile devices increased by 114%. Tablet access also went up 93% over the previous year. For those using such devices the Apple iPad and iPhone were the two most popular devices. These trends seem to be in alignment with the technology industry and suggest that our readers are technically savvy.

Interestingly only three of this year’s top 10 articles first appeared in 2014. These were the very popular “Great Holocaust Mystery” and “Jewish Hand in the World Wars, Part 2” by Dalton, and my own “No Smoking Gun, No Silver Bullets.” The remaining top 7 were all published in prior years and again demonstrate a unique value of on-line publishing. Traditional print has a short life expectancy, while on-line publishing lends itself well to new readers who find older works no differently than brand-new ones.

Finally, we would be neglectful if we failed to mention that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified Inconvenient History as a “hate group” this year (they are of course wrong on both counts!) This has resulted in at least one High School and one College assigning us (along with 19 other groups) as a topic for research by its students. One college student carried on an email exchange with me for several weeks. Here are a few relevant comments:

“Even if I disagree with some of your stances, I feel you have every right to voice, research, and debate your opinions free of reprisal. That being said that’s not my assignment and I wish I had gotten a true “hate group” to make my efforts much easier… yet I digress… I know your motivation is to establish a clear truth about the holocaust.”

“This experience has opened my eyes to a subject I had never even considered, if nothing else you seemingly accomplished your goal, with one person. In the sense that I believe people should have the right to discuss anything…”

Imagine if our all of our sworn enemies promoted our work on campuses across the nation! Even if only that one mind were changed, I would say 2014 was quite a successful year. We know however that we are reaching tens of thousands all around the world. We are opening the eyes of countless people to subjects they never considered. They are learning that there is another side to the story and they believe that we should have the right to debate these points free of reprisal. Based on the accomplishments of 2014, it appears that the New Year will be quite an inconvenient one for the enemies of truth and intellectual freedom.

]]>http://revblog.codoh.com/2015/01/inconvenient-history-2014-the-year-in-review/feed/0Bone-Crushing Caught on Film!http://revblog.codoh.com/2014/12/bone-crushing-caught-on-film/
http://revblog.codoh.com/2014/12/bone-crushing-caught-on-film/#commentsTue, 09 Dec 2014 22:03:39 +0000http://revblog.codoh.com/?p=2347An alert reader has sent us a color film of concentration-camp inmates operating a machine quite clearly the same as the one examined by our Klaus Schwensen in our Fall 2013 issue!

The scene is in the three seconds between 52:38 min and 52:41 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBHwOY5nEDQ. Not to spoil it for you, but you’ll note how cunningly the evil Nazi captors have set up a truly convincing “set” to make it appear that the inmates, rather than crushing their co-religionists’ bones to throw righteous post-war prosecutors off the track, are working on building or repairing a road!

Revisionists may feel an overwhelming sense of irony in noting educational disturbances currently occurring in the conservative bastion in the state of Colorado centered around the city of Golden.

There, reports say, students at two high schools are calling in “sick” and otherwise playing hooky while many of their teachers are doing the same thing.

The students’ cause, it would seem, is proposed revisions to the history curriculum intended to portray public affairs in the American past as more “orderly” (my word – the source is here). The contention centers around recent revision (there’s that word) of the content of the US History Advanced Placement tests (this was done by the College Board, far outside Colorado) that the local school board feels portrays the United States in an unduly critical manner. While much revisionism centers on just such matters, the offending revisions do not touch upon the subject of the Holocaust, another popular subject of revisionism. Pity, that, but the contrary would be much bigger news if it were true, as demonstrated recently in Rialto, California.

Meantime, the teachers’ agenda, like that of other opponents of revisionism, would seem to have powerful ulterior elements – to wit, stormy negotiations between the local teachers’ union and the local school board.

On a bronze bench on the Georgetown University campus, looking toward White-Gravenor Hall, sits the bronze effigy of a slim gentleman holding a cane to the ground and gazing beatifically at a chessboard occupying the center of the bench. There’s plenty of room at the opposite end of the bench for would-be friends of (the gentleman represented by) the statue to sit and pose for photographs with an icon of western civilization who truly may be held instrumental in the violent and early deaths of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers along with even greater numbers of Europeans, citizens of his native Poland among them.

And plenty of people do, with pride of association beaming from faces reflecting utter ignorance of the sin and treachery so abundantly committed by (the man represented by) the bronze figure on the right side of the bench they sit on. And how not? The very plaque that adorns this disinformative statuary proclaims this Catholic Pole “Righteous of the Nations of the World” according to the State of Israel, and “A Just Man” to those who visit the campus of the Catholic Georgetown University. He is, by the subtitle of E. Thomas Wood’s 1994 hagiography of Jan Karski, the “Man Who Tried to Stop the Holocaust.”

Hogwash. The man whose image is cast in immortal bronze on the bench, in capitals all around the world between Washington and Warsaw, was a base opportunist who exploited the very real suffering of Europe’s Jews during World War II to serve the interests of his first employer, the Foreign Ministry of the government of Poland that in September 1939 evaporated before the combined onslaughts of National Socialist Germany and Soviet Russia. Once the ship of the Polish (non-communist) state started sinking after World War II, this resourceful “rat” jumped to the safer decks of the United States, in whose language he acquired very useful tutelage during service in Poland’s mission to Britain before the War. In 1952, by the intercession of his Georgetown sponsor, Father Edmund Walsh, he landed a post on the faculty of Georgetown University’s vaunted School of Foreign Service, remaining on its payroll until his death in 2000.

But this hardy survivor did not stop his enterprises with subjects like “Material towards a Documentary History of the Fall of Eastern Europe (1938-1948),” his dissertation at the very same institution at which he began his career in the very same year. No, after the Communist domination of Eastern Europe became an established and familiar fact, Elie Wiesel, of Holocaust-survival fame, tipped Karksi off that the market for Holocaustology was heating up, and that he might find it a good career move to jump on that bandwagon, whose course Wiesel was already steering from his bully pulpit at Boston University. Karski’s linking up with E. Thomas Wood for the book Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust was a reprise of Karski’s earlier caper ironically chronicled in Wood’s book’s Chapter 11, in which Wood describes the writing and publication of Karski’s own 1944 bestseller, The Story of a Secret State. That book rode the back edge of America’s wave of war fever originally contrived by its own President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to prolong America’s wrenching contributions to Europe’s conflagration instigated by Jewish antipathy for Germany’s National Socialist government. The later book rode what might be the crest of America’s wave of Judeophilia inspired by Israel’s 1967 war against neighboring Arab governments that Israel said were threatening its existence. And the reprise, like the original, was another success for Jan Kozielewski, which is the birth name that somehow became lost in the convoluted career that its erstwhile bearer led through his long and very creative life.

Kozielewski/Karski quickly became a darling of the surge of Holocaust iconography that was launched after Israel’s 1967 war against its Arab neighbors and the need to cover up who started it, and why, and what its consequences were. Here was an issue whose time had come, and neither Karski nor his Catholic (Georgetown University) employer was in any way above cashing in on it. To the contrary, it was about this time that the Jan Karski Institute for Holocaust Education took up residence in the hallowed halls of the institution of higher education near the banks of the Potomac. Follow the money—especially if you’re on the receiving end!

Kozielewski’s movements place him “on the scene” of critical events like a veritable Forrest Gump of war, genocide, and all the plotting and scheming that goes into making such things, even after discounting his numerous and egregious exaggerations of his roles as a lieutenant in the Polish Army, a junior diplomat in the Polish Foreign Ministry, a courier-turned-public-relations-agent for the London-based Polish government in exile, a best-selling author, a university professor and finally, a saint.

It may have begun in London in 1937, when Kozielewski was a very junior diplomat in Poland’s embassy, where the ambassador, Edward Raczynski, was privy to secret communications among Poland, Britain, France and the United States in which the American president was assuring the Europeans that the industrial and military might of his country was behind them in any moves they might make to oppose Germany initiatives on the Continent. To Poland, of course, this provided a free hand in dealing with troubles arising from oppression of German minorities trapped on their territory by the Treaty of Versailles, a freedom they exploited vigorously. Our saint may well have been privy to all these machinations.

Be that as it may, Kozielewski was returned to Warsaw by February of 1938, where he could well have been privy to the part taken by Poland’s foreign ministry in the escalation of tensions with Germany instigated, ultimately, by the renegade president of the giant in North America, Franklin D. Roosevelt. But our man was still a lieutenant in the horse artillery of the reserves of the Polish Army, and he had, however reluctantly, to heed the mobilization order of August 23, 1939 that preceded the “surprise” attack from Germany a bit over a week later. On that infamous September 1, where was Lieutenant Kozielewski? With his horse-artillery unit stationed in the Polish army barracks at … Auschwitz! When the first explosions occurred, the unit’s horses reportedly ran away, so the entire unit, Kozielewski says, turned and ran without firing a single shot in resistance. The story says a lot about how the Wehrmacht found Poland’s opposition such a joke.

But our unbloodied hero continued the fight by means that required neither shooting nor standing his ground. His counterattack of subterfuge began with misrepresenting his rank to his Soviet captors, who, accepting his claims of being a mere enlisted man, released him before taking 15,000 of his fellow officers to Katyn and shooting them. From at least this point, Kozielewski realized that deceit could save his life. But it could do more—much, much more.

His wartime wanderings thereafter took him to many places rarely visited by Catholic Poles, including the Warsaw ghetto, where he witnessed atrocities witnessed by no one else, and reportedly the concentration camp at Belzec, except that he later admitted his penetration of “Belzec” actually occurred at a transit camp some 70 kilometers distant from Belzec, where also he made reports of goings-on seen by no one else. Later, while touring the United States, to which his country had long since delivered the war desired by its president, he, like the “real” Forrest Gump, gained an audience with the very same President Roosevelt, who presumably thanked Kozielewski for his assistance in the former’s diabolical plot. After the fact, we hear that Kozielewski treated Roosevelt to hair-raising stories of cruelty by the Germans to people of the religion of his Secretary of State Henry Morgenthau, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Baruch and many other key supporters. These stories—of the interview, and of the atrocities—benefitted the sainted murderer on the bench enormously.

And so it went, on and on and on over a career that at that point sill had more than a half-century to run: exploitation and opportunism. This is the formula, it may be seen, for getting your effigy cast in bronze and placed on the grounds of the Catholic bastion in the capital of the American Imperium.

Let us all take note—very good and careful note—of how this is done, and accord the various images of Karski that bedeck various campuses and public places around the world the respect they deserve.

I managed to find the time to read the well-written and generally fair-minded review of David Cole’s autobiography. I realize you do not publish letters to the editor, but a few corrections are in order.

While it is true that many revisionists do not engage in on site forensic investigation, the pioneer in that field is Ditlieb Felderer, who visited Auschwitz-Birkenau some 27 times in the 1970s, expertly documenting the facility in approximately 30,000 color photographs. The fact that this achievement is unknown or forgotten is troubling (most of Felderer’s priceless collection was, I am told, destroyed in the arson which razed Ernst Zündel’s home in Toronto in 1995. My video of a sideshow presentation Ditlieb gave in Ithaca, NY in the mid 1980s – “Tour of Auschwitz Fakes” – offers several dozen for viewing).

Moreover, it is news to me that Mr Cole inherited ADL double-agent David McCalden’s “files.” If David Cole read “everything,” then, unless the files had been sanitized by a 3rd party before conveying them to Cole, Mr Cole should have come across evidence of McCalden’s double-dealing (for the record, Mr. McCalden was not an Irish nationalist, he was a Scotch-Irish, Ulster “Orangemen,” very much opposed to the IRA and other armed manifestations of Irish nationalism).

Cole demonstrates affection for Ernst Zündel as a likable nincompoop. Such an opinion overlooks or discounts this writer’s book-length account (The Great Holocaust Trial), of the highly organized and brilliantly orchestrated first Zündel trial in Toronto in 1985, where Canada’s national media, with whom I shared the press gallery, were shocked and disoriented by the defense which Ernst, Doug Christie and Robert Faurisson were able to mount; including having, for the first time in recorded history, the testimony of “infallible” Survivors and august “Holocaust” historian Raul Hilberg publicly shredded in a court of law. Mr. Zündel documented his trials via video recordings of news coverage and daily de-briefings by defense attorney Christie in the basement of Zündelhaus. Some of this this can be glimpsed in my film, also titled “The Great Holocaust Trial.”

Ernst’s second trial, the huge transcript of which has been preserved and published by Barbara Kulaszka, documents the breadth and depth of his defense, which left virtually no stone unturned in doing justice to the revisionist cause and the defense of the German people.

Mr. Cole is a revisionist for the Millennial generation. His book will likely serve to reach new people who would otherwise be oblivious to the “other (revisionist”) side” of the chronicle of the Second World War. Nonetheless, I am old-fashioned enough to be distressed by the casual and sloppy manner in which Mr. Cole demeans men like Ernst Zündel and Prof. Faurisson, the latter having been the first revisionist to have been recognized by a head of state for his enormous scholarly achievement and who, even as an octogenarian, continues to inspire the radical avant- grade in France to high profile defiance and satire of the sacred relics that are at the heart of the religion of Holocaustianity.

Mr Cole will be a more effective writer and educator when he learns to moderate his frenzies and refrain from dalliances with the fringes of false witness. A bit more humility might have prevented him from misrepresenting, indeed even smearing, revisionists who have never recanted in the face of beatings, bombings and imprisonments which far surpass anything the Republican Party Animal has endured.

There is no solid evidence showing if and when Hitler decided on the “final solution.”

To this day we have no solid evidence showing if and when Hitler decided on this so-called “Endlösung”, i.e., “The Holocaust”. Many theories have been advanced, one by Gerlach for instance who claims Hitler made his wish known to kill all Jews during a meeting of December 12,1941. Just speculations, of course. Then the ‘meeting of minds’ by Hilberg, all desperate attempts to substantiate something unsustainable.

Just recently I came across an article by Martin Broszat: “Soziale Motivation und Führer-Bindung des Nationalsozialismus (Social motivation and Führer bond/commitment of the NS), published in VfZ, 1970, pp.394-409. Broszat, as is well known, was a ‘functionalist’, thus leaning towards Hilberg.

Born in 1937, it is impossible for me to understand the ‘National Socialism’ phenomenon – for obvious reasons. In fact people who were born earlier, like Broszat (1926-1989), who experienced it all more consciously, are still, in 1970 when this article was published, trying to make sense of it, without jeopardizing their career.

He starts out by stating that research so far was focused on specific segments under NS – the economy, civil service, etc., – but that he will make an effort to shed light on the ‘internal condition and functionality’ of the NS regime, the development of it, its social motivations and how the absolute leadership principle could coincide with NS ideology. In view of the mass support base NS was able to build up, consisting mostly of the middle class, the question arises as to the ideological commitment of the masses to NS vs. the manipulatory effect of NS propaganda. In spite of all efforts, it was impossible for the party to create this mass movement out of thin air. The economic crisis of the time alone was also not the decisive factor, or Marxism would have been successful. NS succeeded because it fulfilled the yearning of the populace for continuity and change at the same time. The inconsistency and outright lies by the NSdAP concerning social issues can not invalidate the significance of the social dynamic, the massive success of the party. The failure to fulfill the promises made re. social programs in 1933 can not negate the societal effect the NSdAP had – and left behind.

It was not only the ‘ragged proletarians’(Lumpenproletariat) that formed the mass basis of the movement, it was the lower middle class, farmers and students. They did not wish for the status quo to continue but if NS ‘mystique’ succeeded during this time of peril it was because of the failure of Marxism to appreciate ‘political reality’. The middle class understood Marxism to mean the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, proletarian equalization, and National Socialists profited from this.

I need to interject here. Broszat underestimates the intelligence of the workers and the middle class, by portraying what they saw in Marxism, Bolshevism more precisely, as a misconception. It was not. Germans were well informed as to what this “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” stood for, i.e., mass murder. Prof. Ernst Nolte quotes from a diary entry by Thomas Mann of May 2,1919, in which Mann asks if European culture can be saved or if this Kyrgyz method of ‘culling and extermination (butchering) will be successful (Der Europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945, Ullstein 1987, p.90).

Back to Herr Broszat. Voting for the NSdAP in 1930-1932 did not necessarily mean support for NS ideology but a rejection of existing conditions, and seeing NS as the only non-Marxist ideology with a chance for success (Prof. Nolte goes into detail on this subject in the above mentioned book). Then there was the desire by famers, nouveau middle class and youth for political representation – the existing system had neglected them. The vagueness of the NS program did not deter them, quite the opposite, they considered it to be flexibility and vitality, and as a chance to have an influence on the finished product. This irrational attitude of faith can surely be dismissed as ‘hysterical confusion’, as irresponsible self-betrayal but this will not negate the social dynamic of the movement. It instead displays the penned-up pressure of social tensions and the Hitler movement addressed the issues by promising to dismantle the old feudal and bureaucratic structures. It was characteristic for NS that it did not portray itself as social-reactionary, not intending to renew the old order but to promise a reinstatement of lost prestige through ‘revolutionary renewal.’

This duality of revolutionary tendencies and at the same time restorative efforts is what made NS attractive. Romantic images and values of the past were restyled to appeal to a young, avant-garde, movement. The fallback to the natural familiar community was transformed into the social ideal of a disciplined and equivalent production society. Instead of subservience the demand was for ‘national fellowship’. The exclusive elite of aristocratic leadership was replaced by the approachable ‘folkish blood-nobility’ of the German Master race. The charismatic Führer with whom one could identify represented the effacement of the distance to nobility. This new configuration reflected the dynamic of this new middle-class. The peculiarity of entrenched class-conscious bourgeois mentality and social morality on the one hand and status-inferiority, social dependence and economic impotence combined to form the ‘extremism of the middle’, with NS as the standard bearer.

The social thrust from which the NSdAP profited was already prevalent in the time of strife (Kampfzeit), resulting in an enormous frenzy of activities, the ability to improvise and the overall energy of the followers. And this explains the extraordinary accomplishments and engagement of broad segments of the population during the Hitler regime. World War I had shown that during a national crisis, resulting in truce between opposites, society can reach the pinnacle of accomplishments. And the Hitler regime was able to make this, what had been exceptional, the norm. The regulating of all social segments resulted in a psychological equalization and shortened the distance between the upper and lower class. And because of the many-facetted activities of the party, the numerous organizations, a new society was created. New possibilities for advancement, regardless of social standing, opened up. Not the revolutionary overthrow of the old social order, but the diminishing influence of the old power brokers weakened the conservative order of old, in the family as well as in school, in administration and the economy, in the fighting forces and universities. Equality and better chances for advancement, as well as the emancipation of up to now apolitical segments of society, was the obvious result of the efforts by the Hitler regime, having many of them believe, in spite of ideological and political oppression, that they were living in an open and free society.

But the regime was not able to lay the foundation for a lasting, rational new order/beginning. Incapable of fulfilling the social promises made to mobilize the masses it was thus forced to direct the focus on distant objectives, on destructive goals, overextending its potentials.

Before continuing to Chapter 2, a few comments: Broszat has to admit that the NS party had massive support, and by tortured reasoning tries to explain it away, make it seem like deception when in fact the support by the classes identified by him was real. To this day people are unable to explain why Germans stuck to Hitler to the bitter end. Broszat points to the power struggles within the party, etc., no doubt true. For instance, Wilfred von Oven, Goebbels’s personal adjutant, quotes the latter complaining that: If the world would only know what our “Führer state” is like in reality. Goebbels then goes on to point to some of the rivalries and the outright incompetence of some (Finale Furioso, Grabert, 1974, p.255). Broszat claims that the party program had been vague, intentionally so, and he might be right. But, taking all of this into consideration, Broszat is unable to explain why National Socialism was very popular.

And now to how the “Endlösung” is supposed to fit into this, according to Broszat. The next, and last, segment is about Hitler’s leadership and NS ideology. Most historians agree that the history of the NSdAP and the Third Reich centers around Hitler. It has been pointed out that National Socialism, in contrast to other ideologies, was not primarily an ideological and program-oriented movement, but a charismatic movement personified by Hitler. The Führer was therefore not the propagator of an idea, the utopian NS Weltanschauung (ideology) became reality through the personality of Hitler. One can therefore restrict any analysis of Third Reich politics to Hitler’s ideology, with fanatical anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism as well as the acquisition of new Lebensraum in the East the only constant issues.

These constants were however not decisive in winning the masses – they played a secondary role. The fight against Marxism and the party state were the points stressed by NS propaganda; anti-Semitism et al could considered to be the arcanum (Broszat’s word) of the Führer-reign not meant to be made public (therefore the secret mass execution of Jews [Broszat]), but not the reason for the success of National Socialism. There are those who stress that the history of the Third Reich was written by Hitler, dictated by his personal ideology. But these analyses are not convincing. Attempting to interpret ‘Hitler’ presents a problem, and those trying to find a solution must consider the question if Hitler was not just the agent of certain interests, but perhaps the representative of antagonistic powers and tendencies – personified by him – doomed to a cataclysmic conclusion.

Portraying that image of resoluteness, Hitler articulated what his listeners wanted to hear, if only subconsciously. He verbalized what they secretly thought and wanted, he reinforced their as yet uncertain longings and prejudices, instilling in them the feeling of being part of a new truth and thus ensured their willingness for selfless participation. Hitler’s rise to power from mediocrity shows that his leadership qualities could only develop in a certain crisis atmosphere and collective psychology. With this exaltation as the background he was able to experience his own neurosis as truth and to make the collective neurosis in the image of his own obsession.

It therefore becomes clear that the individuality of Hitler can not be factored out of National Socialism, but also: that Hitler’s historical possibilities to act were dependent on definite predetermined conditions, much more so than other heads of state. We therefore need to ask why these elements were lodged in the mind of the Hitler and were the only ones consequently realized. He was the one who held the ideology together, meaning that he stood above it and was not bound by specific issues. And that was only possible by identifying irreconcilable enemies that had to be fanatically combatted. Anti-Semitism and Anti-Bolshevism were the negatives that met these conditions, with the acquisition of living space in the east the positive. Anti-Semitism and Anti-Bolshevism mobilized the masses against these alleged conspirators and exploiters, with the living space utopia as the therapeutic image of an autarkic great power. But those objectives (or better action-directions), had little to do with reality and were therefore immune to correction. That is why Hitler was forced to repeatedly refer to them to keep the movement going, especially since more and more of the envisioned concepts proved to be illusive.

The NS movement was, in most cases, only able to cast doubt on the conditions of the existing order, but when trying to address these issues resistance was encountered by the parties who the NS depended on for support. And because of being unable to turn NS ideology into reality, more emphasis was put on the implementation of the negative programs, to demonstrate that at least some of NS ideological concepts were realized. Therefore, to not alienate the conservative partners and other state authorities, measures were taken to combat certain, powerless, minorities: the hereditarily defective, the mentally challenged, antisocial elements and Jews, by passing condemnatory laws. This stereotypical negation was the only issue the “Extremism of the Middle” could agree on from the beginning, by the dismissal of anything ‘strange/different’ and ‘immoral’, and of all ‘unwanted elements’. And because the supporting middle class had no corresponding social interests of their own, they allowed the Führer to act on their behalf. This ‘selection of negative ideologies’ resulted, over time, in the radicalization and perfection of inhumanities. But if the ideology of a new beginning, propagated following the NS coming to power, could not be realized, and the negative aspects were instead concentrated on, then the continued discrimination against the Jews, mentally challenged, antisocial elements, etc., was inevitable. But this could not be an open-ended process; therefore it had to end in the “Endlösung”. And that was the consequence of National Socialism as represented by Hitler.

No evidence exists that the mass murder of Jews, started in 1941/42, had secretly been planned as a distant goal. The up to 1939 forced emigration of Jews, the Madagascar-Plan, were not intended as the physical extermination of the Jews, only the removal of Jews from the German sphere of influence. Concerning Jewish programs one must assume that a radicalization over time took place; this is not to say that the possibility of the liquidation of Jews had not earlier been considered by Hitler and/or some of his followers. But this could only have been a possibility, realized later because of changing conditions. And as Hitler was forced to again and again refer to fall back upon the negative aspects, to placate the movement, the phraseology finally caught up and what had been propagated as ideology, as mobilization of the masses, had to be realized. With this the NS regime arrived at the last absurdity, resulting finally in the destruction of the movement, for with the secret extermination of the Jews, anti-Semitism as a propaganda tool was also buried.

So much for Herr Broszat and again I have to label this as ‘tortured reasoning’. He tries to make a case for the Endlösung, i.e., “The Holocaust” as being a logical consequence of the inability of the NSdAP to bring about real change and Hitler having therefore to rely on the negative, Anti-Semitism, finally resulting in the mass extermination of Jews. In the newest publication another theory is advanced. “Neue Studien zu nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas”(2011) focusses on the NS euthanasia program, the argument: being that if one happened the other must have.

Twice Broszat refers to the ‘secret’ mass killing of Jews (pp.400, 408); he no doubt had to, because of the scores of Germans still alive who lived through that time and asking, himself perhaps included: Why did I not know anything about this? And since he did not find anything resembling a plan for this alleged mass murder, he had to engage in these mental gymnastics about the “Endlösung” being a logical extension of NS policies. One could almost feel sorry for him, unable to explain, convincingly, how ‘it’ happened but asserting nonetheless that it did. For me there is not a more convincing case against “The Holocaust” than the ‘explanations’ offered by Broszat et al. If real evidence to substantiate what is claimed would exist, it would be submitted instead of these theories. And finally, it is impossible to murder millions of Jews in secret.

The Holy Roman Empire German Nation, in fact a German Empire – German chiefs had accepted the Pope as ceremonial head of state – for various reasons disintegrated over time into Kingdoms, Principalities, Duchies, etc., etc.. And although the Hapsburg’s, the last line of German Emperors who had moved to Vienna from Aachen, were still accepted as Emperors, their influence was limited. When Bismarck appeared on the political scene at around the middle of the 1800s, he started out as ‘Bismarck the Prussian’ to later become ‘Bismarck the German’ with the aim to re-unite Germany, sans Austria, under the Hohenzollern, a Swabian Dynasty, the rulers of Prussia.

Bismarck was aware that very few rulers, least of all the Hapsburgs, were in favor of his plan, he nevertheless continued, making the re-unification his Raison d’être. He was a shrewd politician and considered parliament to be a debating club, not capable of making the decisions needed to be made. He stunned Germany, even the King and the world when, on September 30, 1862, following the failed Revolution of 1848, in his speech to the Reichstag (German Parliament) he stated:

“It is true that we can hardly escape complications in Germany, though we do not seek them. Germany does not look to Prussia’s liberalism, but to her power. The South German States would like to indulge in liberalism, and therefore no one will assign Prussia’s role to them! Prussia must collect her forces and hold them in reserve for a favourable moment, which has already come and gone several times. Since the treaties of Vienna, our frontiers have been ill-designed for a healthy body politic. The great questions of the time will be decided, not by speeches and resolutions of majorities (that was the mistake of 1848 and 1849), but by iron and blood.”(Emil Ludwig, Bismarck, (Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1927), pp. 206/07.)

Bismarck’s phrase was turned around by the press to read “blood and iron,” and whether real or feigned, alarms were raised. Bismarck never repudiated his words – all he did is state a fact – although he later deplored having used them. Another of his speeches is also misrepresented. In 1888, four weeks before the death of William I, in his last speech to the Reichstag Bismarck talked about the situation in Europe:

“In these days we must husband our strength,” says Bismarck, “and it is in our power to be stronger than any other nation of equal numbers…We are placed in the center of Europe, are liable to attack on at least three fronts,…and are, moreover, exposed to the risk of coalitions to a greater extent than any other nation…The pike in the European fishpond make it impossible for us to play the part of harmless carp, for they would fain fix their teeth in both our sides…They constrain us to a unity which is repugnant to our German nature, and were it not for this pressure from without we should all fly apart…We Germans fear God, and are not afraid of anything else in the world, and it is because we fear God that we seek peace and ensue it.” (Ibid, pp. 551/52)

It is the last part of his speech that is misquoted to this day, the last sentence left out. Now back to the issues at hand.

The Prussians eventually defeated the Austrians at Königgrätz, and Prussian generals, who at first were reluctant to fight a war against Austria, now wanted to pursue the defeated Austrian army. But at Bismarck’s insistence – he envisioned a Germany/Austria-Hungary co-existence – the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was left intact. And although its influence had been further diminished, most of German nobility still considered the Hapsburg’s to be legitimate heads of state. Then France became the concern, Napoleon III claiming that the German block forming to the east was a threat to France’ existence, that even though not one menacing gesture was made toward France. In this mistrust the “hereditary enemy” issue played a part, this dating back to the middle ages. A little more background is necessary.

At the Treaty of Verdun, in 843, the Empire was split among three brothers, the sons of Emperor Louis I. Louis the German (Ludwig der Deutsche), received the eastern portion (later Germany), Charles the II (the Bald, Karl der Kahle) became King of the western portion (later France) and Lothair I (Lothar I) received the central portion (Low Countries, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence and most of northern Italy. Following the death of Lothair I, in the Treaty of Mersen, most of the territory given to him at Verdun was divided between Louis the German and Charles II. In 962 a new Roman Empire came into being, commonly known as the “Holy Roman Empire, German Nation,” ruled by an Emperor. It was in fact a German Empire with the Pope as ceremonial head of state, thus the “Holy Roman” in the name, but German armies had to insure that the Pope remained in his position and to assert German authority. The Empire stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north, to the northern part of Italy in the south and included Ostarrichi (Austria) in the East. By the 11th Century, the western border of this Empire run in almost a straight line from roughly Antwerp in the north to Marseilles in the south, encompassing the Duchy of Lorraine, as well as Alsace (VEB Hermann Haack, Atlas zur Geschichte Gotha/Leipzig, 1973, p.30).

The Brothers shared the territory of Western Europe, thus the “hereditary enemy” angle. Also, all of the border disputes between France and Germany originate from that time, most of Alsace-Lorraine originally part of the German Empire, not France. In early 1870 Leopold of Hohenzollern was offered the Spanish crown, the French immediately hollered “encirclement,” Leopold declined, but the French asked the King of Prussia for assurances that this will never happen again and when the king refused, (The so-called Ems Dispatch played a role. The King had sent Bismarck a telegram, the text to be published and claims are made that Bismarck altered it. Not so, he changed some words but did not alter the meaning), France declared war on Prussia. Bismarck did not interfere, he knew that war with France was inevitable – the French trying to prevent German unification – just as war with Austria before had been. Bismarck then asked the German Rulers how they would react, leave Prussia to battle the French on her own and be defeated as in 1806 – and have the French rule parts of Germany, or the whole of it again – or would they come to Prussia’s assistance. The Rulers came to the assistance of Prussia, reluctantly, and when the war was over France was defeated. Germany was united territorially but not in spirit, that took years and one could argue that it never happened to this day. At the peace treaty Alsace,- as well as large parts of Lorraine, was/were ceded to Germany, against Bismarck’s wishes but this time he had to give in, the generals citing security concerns – Alsace “protruding” into Germany, making it suitable for an act of aggression by France, and with the King claiming that it was German territory in any case. But as Bismarck had envisioned, the French later thirsted for revenge, claiming Alsace-Lorraine was stolen from them. German re-unification changed the map of the continent and brought Britain onto the scene.

Prelude to World War I

On February 9. 1871, the war had just ended, Disraeli (later Lord Beaconsfield), then leader of the opposition, gave a speech to parliament in which he stated/declared:

“Let me impress upon the attention of the House the character of this war between France and Germany. It is no common war, like the war between Prussia and Austria, or like the Italian war in which France was engaged some years ago; nor is it like the Crimean War.
This war represents the German revolution, a greater political event than the French revolution of last century. I don’t say a greater, or as great a social event. What its social consequences may be are in the future. Not a single principle in the management of our foreign affairs, accepted by all statesmen for guidance up to six months ago, any longer exists. There is not a diplomatic tradition which has not been swept away. You have a new world, new influences at work, new and unknown objects and dangers with which to cope,….We used to have discussions in this House about the balance of power. Lord Palmerston, eminently a practical man, trimmed the ship of State and shaped its policy with a view to preserve an equilibrium in Europe. […] But what has really come to pass? The balance of power has been entirely destroyed, and the country which suffers most, and feels the effects of this great change most, is England” (GHDI document http://germanhistorydocs.ghidc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1849 )

Just paranoia? Hardly, and that even though never a threatening gesture had been made toward England, English Royalty of German origin, the German House of Saxe-Coburg also the royal house of the British, the name changed to The House of Windsor only in 1917. The reason for this English “concern” was that she had – for centuries – tried to maintain what it called the balance of power, which in fact was an successful effort to ensure that no rival power would emerge threatening her hegemony. When for instance France became too strong under Napoleon I England sited with Prussia to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo. And now, following the re-unification of Germany, plans were made in a circle around the Price of Whales, later to become King Edward VII, to render powerless “Middle Europe”, i.e., Germany and Austria-Hungary. The circle included Lord Randolph Churchill (father of Winston), the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Salisbury and the head of the house of Rothschild (Renate Riemeck, Mitteleuropa, Bilanz eine Jahrhunderts, Verlag Engel & Co., 1965, p.12).

With the 100-year anniversary approaching, some articles and book have been published in regards to World War I and who started it, what really happened? One of the more often mentioned books is that by Christopher Clark, Sleepwalkers. As the title suggest, Clark tries to make a case for the European heads of state ‘sleepwalking’ into the war, they just didn’t pay attention and that therefore not one state is to blame (At Versailles, the Germans were forced to sign the war guilt clause, Germany solely responsible). He is right to not blame Germany, but this was no sleepwalk, the war was well planned by a few, working behind the scenes.

Riemeck, in the above-mentioned book, writes that to start with, an alliance between Russia and France had to be formed, with England ready to come to the assistance, thus encircling Germany and Austria-Hungary (Ibid, pp.12ff). Bismarck was aware that the re-united Germany would cause anxieties, and was instrumental in forming the Three Emperors League between Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Bismarck also made every effort to maintain good relations with the Czar, bending backwards to avoid friction, it would thus seem almost impossible for the Brits to get Russia on board, but that they did succeed is history. Prof. E. Adamov in his Die Diplomatie des Vatikans (The diplomacy of the Vatican, Verlag von Reimar Hobbing in Berlin SW61, 1932), provides details. The book, containing many documents, was published by the Bolsheviks to expose some of the secret dealings (Riemeck, p.12). Riemeck shows, as does Adamov, that the Vatican only played a minor role – was a tool – the real powers behind the encirclement of Germany sat in England.

And that brings us to another recent publication, Hidden History. The secret Origins of the First World War, by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh and London, 2013. The authors begin their text as follows:

“The history of the First World War is a deliberately concocted lie. Not the sacrifice, the heroism, the horrendous waste of life or the misery that followed. No, these were very real, but the truth of how it all began and how it was unnecessarily and deliberately prolonged beyond 1915 has been successfully covered up for a Century. A carefully falsified history was created to conceal the fact that Britain, not Germany, was responsible for the war. Had the truth become widely known after 1918, the consequences for the British Establishment would have been cataclysmic (p.11)… To this day, researchers are denied access to certain First World War documents because the Secret Elite had much to fear from the truth, as do those who have succeeded them (p.15).”

They base much of what they wrote on two books by Prof. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment and Tragedy and Hope. They outline in detail how during a meeting of Cecil Rhodes, William Stead and Lord Esher in February 1891 plan were laid to form a ‘Secret Elite’:

“…a secret society that aimed to renew the Anglo-Saxon bond between Great Britain and the United States [1], spread all that they considered good in the English ruling-class traditions, and expand the British Empire’s influence in a world they believed they were destined to control (p.17).
[1] W.T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, p.62.”

The Secret Elite, the original three eventually replaced/joined by others, set out to realize their plan for Britain, along with the US, to rule the world, and Middle Europe, i.e., Germany and Austria-Hungary, were in the way. For Britain to declare war on them would have been disastrous, and also, Britain could then not have claimed the moral high ground. Therefore efforts were made to forge alliances, to encircle Germany and Austria. First, Russia and France had to come to terms, and the Secret Elite worked diligently in the background to make it happen. Then, Russia and England had to become friends, but before this could happen the ‘Russian bear’ had to be tamed. To achieve that goal, England: “…decided to break 500 years of insular tradition by wooing Japan”(p.87). English shipyards build the most advanced naval vessels for the Japanese, helping them to defeat the Russian navy in 1905. Also: “A massive and consistent propaganda drive was needed to create a German ‘menace’ and whip the British people into a froth of hatred towards Germany and Kaiser Wilhelm”(p.63) (The Saturday Review of August 1995 started a series of articles, calling for the destruction of Germany: Germania esse delendam). The violation of Belgium neutrality by Germany at the start of WWI became an issue, it should not have: “King Leopold sold Belgian neutrality for African rubber and minerals…”(pp.108/09). Impossible to go into all of the detail here, fact is, the encirclement was completed and Germany had to fire the first shot.

Kaiser Wilhelm inadvertently helped. Bismarck, as mentioned, took great care to have Germany allied with other powers. The Three Emperors Agreement had been allowed to expire, but good relations were maintained with Austria-Hungary, a natural ally, and a ‘Reassurance Treaty’ had been signed with Russia. Germany and Russia agreed to stay neutral should the other be attacked, this not to apply if Germany were to attack France of Russia Austria. A secret addendum stated that Germany would remain neutral should Russia make the Bosporus an issue. Just as Wilhelm dismissed Bismarck, the term of this treaty was up and needed to be renewed. At first Wilhelm agreed to the extension, but negated because of bad guidance by some of his advisors (Otto Becker, Das französich-russische Bündnis (The French-Russian Alliance], Karl Heymanns, Berlin 1925, pp.43ff). Wilhelm later realized his mistake and in 1905 he and Czar Nikolaus signed a treaty at Björkö, but by then the war party in Russia was firmly in control and the Czar forced to negate. Wilhelm finally realized what was happening, in his assessment of the situation of July 19, 1914 he stated, in part:

“…For I no longer have any doubt that England, Russia and France have agreed among themselves — knowing that our treaty obligations compel us to support Austria — to use the Austro-Serb conflict as a pretext for waging a war of annihilation against us… Our dilemma over keeping faith with the old and honorable Emperor has been exploited to create a situation which gives England the excuse she has been seeking to annihilate us with a spurious appearance of justice on the pretext that she is helping France and maintaining the well-known Balance of Power in Europe, i.e. playing off all European States for her own benefit against us.” (Die Zerstörung der deutschen Politik. Dokumente 1871-1833, Fischer Bücherei 1959, p.199).

When Russia mobilized on July 24th 1914, Germany was forced to implement the Schlieffen Plan to avoid being overrun from east and west. “The plan was discussed in French circles at least as early as 1904” (The World Since 1914, Walter Consuelo Langham, The MacMillan Company, 1948, p.18, footnote 1 [the plan was finalized in 1905]). And if the French knew, so did the British. No significant changes were made to the plan but surely the Germans were aware that this plan could not have been kept in secret for all of those years. If Germany set out to conquer the world, as is alleged, they surely would have worked out something more applicable to that time. In fact, the German leadership were on vacation in the summer of 1914 and munitions would last to October, no stockpiles of it (Die Welt, Jan 18,2014, “Die deutsche Munition reichte nur bis Oktober 1914″).

Germany, having entered the industrial revolution late, was busy manufacturing items for sale and did so quite well. They had no interest in starting a war. But because they had been forced to “fire the first shot,” and those who study history more closely know that this shot is not what starts a conflict, the Germans were forced to sign the “War Guilt” clause at Versailles. One must take this into consideration when discussing the origins of World War Two.

Orwell’s 1984 was a major influence on historical revisionists including Harry Elmer Barnes

George Orwell was born on this day in 1903 in Motihari, India. George Orwell, the pen name of the English author Eric Arthur Blair was a great influence on Twentieth Century revisionism including revisionist pioneer Harry Elmer Barnes. In his important essay, “How ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ Trends Threaten American Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity,” Barnes documented the prophetic nature of Orwell’s classic. Barnes wrote:

Orwell’s book is the keenest and most penetrating work produced in this generation on the current trends in national policy and world affairs. To discuss world trends today without reference to the Orwell frame of reference is not unlike writing on biology without reference to Darwin, Mendel, and De Vries…

Orwell was educated in England at Eton College. After service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927, he returned to Europe to become a writer. He lived for several years in poverty. His earliest experiences resulted in the book Down and Out in Paris and London.
By 1936, Orwell had joined the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was critical of communism but basically considered himself a socialist. He was wounded in the fighting. Late in the war, Orwell fought the communists and eventually had to flee Spain for his life. He documented many of his experiences during the Spanish Civil War in his Homage to Catalonia.

Orwell’s experiences with totalitarian political regimes had a direct impact on his writing. His best-known books reflect his opposition to totalitarianism: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In an article entitled, “Why I Write” Orwell explained:

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism… Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.

During the Second World War, Orwell wrote a weekly radio political commentary designed to counter German and Japanese propaganda in India. His wartime work for the BBC gave him a solid taste of bureaucratic hypocrisy. Many believe that this experience provided the inspiration for his invention of “newspeak,” the truth-denying language of Big Brother’s rule in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Throughout his lifetime, the great English author continually questioned all “official” or “accepted” versions of history. At the conclusion of the war in Europe, Orwell expressed doubt about the Allied account of events and posed the following question in his book Notes on Nationalism, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear… Is it true about the gas ovens in Poland?”

Orwell died on 21 January 1950 in London at the early age of forty-seven of a neglected lung ailment. He left behind a substantial body of work and a reputation for greatness.

Following WWII, Barnes attempted to “bring history into accord with the facts.”

Harry Elmer Barnes was born on this day in 1889. Earlier in the year Benjamin Harrison was sworn in as the 23rd President of the United States. John Philip Sousa’s Marine Corps Band played at the Inaugural Ball with a large crowd in attendance. North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington were added to the union increasing the number of stars on the American flag to 38. The first issue of The Wall Street Journal was published in New York City.

Later that year Thomas Edison screened his very first motion picture, launching a new entertainment medium and an industry centered on moving pictures. Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederate States of America died that December at the age of 81.

Needless to say, when Harry Barnes was born on the family farm in upstate New York, America was a different place from what it is today. Barnes would become known not only as a historian, but also as a criminologist, a sociologist, and an economist. Barnes, who is perhaps best remembered as a bare-knuckled defender of historical revisionism, first became associated with it through his article “Seven Books of History against the Germans,” which appeared in the New Republic in 1924. In the years that followed he tirelessly attempted to revise the official history of the First World War. He called for a return to objectivity noting that without it we “will fail to recognize the futility and needlessness of the horrible tragedy of 1914-19, and will be fatally handicapped in any concerted and intelligent effort to prevent a recurrence of such a cataclysm.”

By the late 1930s academics were coming to embrace the revisionist position on World War One. If honest and truthful history is indeed able to prevent future cataclysms, the triumph of World War One revisionism came too late, for by 1939 an even more costly confrontation would be ignited.

In the years following World War Two, Barnes attempted to do as he had done with the First World War. He attempted to “bring history into accord with the facts.” Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Barnes published many pamphlets including “Revisionism and the Historical Blackout,” “The Court Historians versus Revisionism,” “Blasting the Historical Blackout,” “Revisionism and Brainwashing,” and “Revisionism and the Promotion of Peace.” He also worked closely with several other authors to help publish key volumes of Second World War revisionism including works by William Chamberlain, Charles Tansill, F.J.P. Veale, and R.A. Theobald. Perhaps his most important work during this period was the anthology Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.

While a controversial figure in his lifetime, Harry Elmer Barnes is even more controversial today. While he barely commented in any of his many books and articles on the events that subsequently came to be known as “the Holocaust,” Barnes’s memory is tarred through zealous attacks by critics whose chief concerns are the Holocaust. His comments on the Holocaust are largely limited to his positive book review of Paul Rassinier’s trail-blazing work, The Drama of the European Jews (Le drame des juifs européens). Still, he has been slandered as a “Holocaust denier” by implacable and relentless defenders of the orthodox Holocaust story.

Barnes once wrote that in the minds of anti-revisionists the term “revisionism” savors of malice and vindictiveness. It is on this point that I am sure that both his defenders and detractors can agree.

Partial Bibliography of the Works of Harry Elmer Barnes

The New History and the Social Studies, New York: The Century Co., 1925.

History and Social Intelligence, New York: A. A. Knopf, 1926.

In Quest of Truth and Justice; Debunking the War Guilt Myth, Chicago: National Historical Society, 1928.

The Genesis of the World War; an Introduction to the Problem of War Guilt, New York: Knopf, 1929.

The History of Western Civilization, New York: Harcourt, Brace and company 1935.

An Economic History of the Western World, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1937.

A Survey of Western Civilization, Crowell, 1947.

An Introduction to the History of Sociology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.

The Struggle against the Historical Blackout, 1949, 9th edition, 1952.

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath, New York: Greenwood Press, 1969, 1953.

Blasting the Historical Blackout in Britain: Professor A. J. P. Taylor’s “The Origins of the Second World War”; Its Nature, Reliability, Shortcomings and Implications, 1963.

Pearl Harbor after a Quarter of a Century, New York: Arno Press, 1972.

The story of Anne Frank and her family is well-known through the diary bearing her name. This tragic tale is frequently used to counter Holocaust revisionists. The details of the story are often forgotten or replaced with assumptions regarding the fates of Anne Frank and her family. The facts of the story actually support the revisionist view of the Holocaust. The teaching of The Diary of Anne Frank should be embraced by Holocaust revisionists and all who care about learning the truth of what really happened to Europe’s Jews during the Second World War. The popular media version of the Holocaust would have us think that almost all would be gassed upon arrival at the “death camps” and especially Auschwitz. While perhaps a few very strong Jews might be utilized for manual labor, all children, the elderly, the sick would surely be murdered as part of a program of extermination.

However tragic the story of Anne Frank and her family is, its narrative states that Anne Frank was not gassed at Auschwitz. In fact, after being transported to Auschwitz, she was later transported back west to Bergen-Belsen where she succumbed to disease —typhus, the very disease that Zyklon-B (the alleged killing agent) was used in the camps to combat. The story of Anne Frank is a typical example of the fate of many Jews during this time.

What follows is an unpublished letter from David Merlin of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. Merlin submitted this letter to the New York Times in November 2013. The New York Times did not think it was fit to print. As Merlin suggests, understanding the details of the fate of Anne Frank and her family would help to reveal the truth of the policies of the German government during the Second World War. Merlin writes, “details allow us to learn what really happened.” Those details may be inconvenient to some, but due attention to them can greatly aid in dispelling the shroud of calumny and victimhood that today distorts our understanding.

Edward Rothstein

c/o New York Times

New York City

07 November 2013

I am writing to comment on your article, “Playing Cat and Mouse With Searing History,” addressing the new Anne Frank exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance. http://tinyurl.com/kauo33a

While Anne Frank’s story is tragic, you ignore the manner of death of the 8 people in the Annex. The official history is that non-working Jewish people arriving at Auschwitz were all “gassed.” But of the eight sent to Auschwitz on September 3, 1944 from the Annex, not one of them was killed in a gas chamber. Instead, five of the eight were transported back to Germany-Austria in November 1944.

The details of the eight individuals from the Annex are:

The Frank Family was detained for failing to report for labor service and for going into hiding.

1. Anne Frank– sent to Auschwitz, then transported to Belsen where she died of typhus (in Belsen not Auschwitz).

2. Otto Frank– left behind in Auschwitz with those in the sick barracks. Survived the War.

3. Edith Frank-Holländer–left behind in Auschwitz as the Germans retreated.

5. Fritz Pfeffer, sent to Auschwitz then transported to Neuengamme concentration camp where he died on 20 December 1944. His cause of death is listed in the camp records as “enterocolitis.”

6. Auguste van Pels born Auguste Röttgen (Hermann’s wife), whose date of death is unknown. Witnesses testified that she was with the Frank sisters during part of their time in Bergen-Belsen. According to German records, van Pels was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany with a group of eight women on November 26, 1944. Hannah Goslar’s testimony was that she spoke to van Pels through the barbed wire fence “in late January or early February”. Auguste was transferred on February 6, 1945 to Raguhn (Buchenwald in Germany), then to the Czechoslovakia camp Theresienstadt ghetto on April 9, 1945.

7. Peter van Pels died in Mauthausen (not Auschwitz).

8. Hermann van Pels died in Auschwitz. It is often claimed that he was “gassed.” However, according to eyewitness testimony, this did not happen on the day of his arrival there. Sal de Liema, an inmate at Auschwitz who knew both Otto Frank and Hermann van Pels, said that after two or three days in the camp, van Pels mentally “gave up.” He later injured his thumb on a work detail, and requested to be sent to the sick barracks. There is no evidence whatever for the assertion that Hermann van Pels was gassed.

The pattern is the same with other groups closely associated with Anne Frank who were also sent to Auschwitz from Holland.

9. Eva Geiringer — born May 11, 1929. Sent to Auschwitz May 1944 Step-sister of Anne Frank. Survived the War.

11. Heinz Geiringer, brother. Survived Auschwitz but died on a forced march out of the camp.

12. “Pappy” Geiringer. Survived Auschwitz but died on a forced march out of the camp.

The Geiringers were immigrants from Austria; They too ignored a call up for labor service received July 6, 1942 and went into hiding. They were found out on May 11, 1944, detained and were sent to Auschwitz that month.

13. Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper. Was arrested for forgery. Was in the Westerbork, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. Traveled to Auschwitz on the same train as the Frank family and to Belsen with Anne and Anne’s older sister Margot. Survived the War.

14. Lientje, sister of Janny. Was in the Westerbork, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps with Janny. Survived the War.

Elsewhere you have praised the “relentless pursuit of historical details.” You are right. Details allow us to learn what really happened. In this case the details tell us that none of the people traveling with Anne Frank died in “gas chambers.” Why? And why did the Germans transport Anne, her sister, Janny, Lientje and so many others back into Germany in 1944? These are details which should profoundly affect our, and your, understanding of German policies.